of instantaneous destruction of the whole organism this separation does not apparently coincide with the cessation of the vital functions. Recent experiments in resuscitation show that life “withdraws” very slowly and can remain for a long time in a body that to all appearances has become “incapable of living”. Intra-arterial and intracardiac injections (adrenalin and atropin) combined with an artificial supply of oxygen and—where necessary—heart-massage, can set some kind of life on its spasmodic course again, even if only for a short time in most cases. There comes a moment, however, when all these efforts fail. This indicates that the “separation of the soul from the body” has possibly already taken place. This metaphysical moment, which it is not possible to determine by simple observation, is what we call “death”. The hypothesis of a final decision is concerned exclusively with the “moment of death” as understood in this sense.
Stated thus, the question of death is one of urgent theological significance. Philosophical reflexions on death in the thirties brought about a great change in theological perspectives.4 Until then the interest of theologians (if we leave out of account their discussions of the preliminaries to death, the condition of man before death) was concentrated on an evaluation of the conditions of the soul separated from the body after death. The classic answers are well known: with the separation of the soul from the body man’s pilgrimage comes to a definite end; immediately after the particular judgement the soul passes into one of three—or, if we include limbo, which so many adopt as a theological hypothesis, of four—“places for departed souls”, heaven, hell or purgatory, where it awaits the final resurrection at the end of time. The great turning point in theological reflexion came when death itself began to be examined by the theologians.5 What really happens to the whole man at the moment of death?
The final decision which we have assumed as an hypothesis occurs neither before nor after death, but in death. But immediately the objection will be raised: “Surely you cannot assume that anyone really makes the first completely personal act of his life when he is in the state of bodily and spiritual torment we call the throes of death, or, it may be, the state of insensibility no less proper to the process of dying?” From what has been said, it is clear that this objection is like forcing an already open door. Bringing the final decision forward into the agony, into the state before death, would, indeed, betoken great naïveté of thought. It would deprive our arguments of all their power of conviction. On the other hand, the final decision does not take place after death either. Apart from the fact that such an assumption misconceives the metaphysical constitution of the completely personal act, it would also be contrary to the Church’s teaching on the inalterability of the state a man reaches through his death.
2. A TEMPORAL PROCESS IN A NON-TEMPORAL TRANSITION
Our task is to state as clearly as possible the meaning of the expression: “the moment of death”. Accordingly we shall examine two further objections which attack precisely this point.
Firstly: “For the taking of a decision a certain interval of time is required. But, between ‘before death’ and ‘after death’ there is no intervening space of time. The transition must be thought of as a break that has nothing to do with time. But if death is something instantaneous and indivisible, it affords no possibility for a decision, for a decision is always an act extended over a period of time.”6 This argument is verbally very seductive, but logically it is open to question. It must of course be admitted that death as an instantaneous transformation can only occur in a non-temporal transition, and that death is thus not one moment in a temporal succession, but, as it were, a mere line of demarcation between two moments without any temporal extension of its own. But this only means that the last moment before the break and the first after it merge into one another. A line of demarcation without extension of its own does not, in metaphysical terms, bring about a separation within a succession conditioned by time and quantity. The moments of the soul’s “separating” and “being separated” thus coincide. Therefore, the moment of death, the transition itself, is—when looked at from the subsequent condition—the last moment of the preceding condition, and—when viewed from the preceding condition—the first moment of the succeeding condition. So then, although the transition in death must be regarded as something non-temporal, i.e. outside time, the passing and what occurs in the passing are temporal. Because of this, the moment of death offers an opportunity for decision. If the transition in death was not non-temporal, the two moments of before and after could not merge into each other, bringing about a compound and—for that very reason—temporal reality. One suspects that there is another problem at the root of this first counter-argument, and we shall answer this at length when dealing with the next objection, since it gives us the possibility of formulating still more clearly the concept of the “moment of death”.
Secondly: “The hypothesis of a final decision compresses a number of mental acts into one single moment: the act of completely personal decision; preceding this decision in time, an absolutely personal act of perception; conditioning this perception, an awakening of the soul to its spirituality; and so forth. To be able to pose all these acts, the mind requires some length of time, however short. A single moment is not enough.” This objection touches on the problem of temporality. To grasp this in its essentials is one of the hardest tasks in philosophy. Our answer is that the difficulty in question arises from a confusion between the different levels of temporality. The proof can be summarized as follows.
Our experience of time is founded on an observed movement of being. This occurs on different levels, according to the successive stages of being. The first stage in its totality may be called “the sub-personal time-level”. At this level we observe a regular, uniform succession, splitting our world into innumerable flashes of existence, each one of which destroys our world and then re-creates it. Things emerge into being only for a moment and at once disappear into non-being. In other words, the world of our experience arises out of the hidden depths of being as successive moment succeeds to moment.
The second stage in the movement of being is that of our own inner, personal sense of time. At this level the successive moments no longer pass uniformly. Our personal duration takes on different forms: impetuous speed, gradual advance, indolent dawdling. His personal duration is something proper to each individual; it characterizes his mode of existence. Decisions of profound significance compress time and turn it into a kind of thick black line. Superficial decisions, on the other hand, register as mere specks in the course of our existence. We observe the difference in moments of existence when we compare our personal duration with the uniform movement of being on the sub-personal time-level. Strictly speaking the progression of personal reality ought to be measured only by this reality itself. The practical necessities of social life compel us, however, to direct our individual (i.e. intensive) movement of being in accordance with a uniform and sub-personal (i.e. extensive) progression which is independent of us. Furthermore, the sub-personal movement of being is not fundamentally alien to our existence: we are deeply plunged into the sub-personal stream of being and are constantly carried along with it. This is why we are unable to realize our own total content of being, otherwise than in partial acts, in acts dissected into different incomplete functions. Our experience is a double one: on the one side, we have an inkling of what purely spiritual duration could be; on the other, we are unable to free ourselves from the segmented succession of a subpersonal movement of being.
It is different at the third stage, to which the soul belongs as it parts from the body and becomes fully awake to its own spirituality. In death the spiritual movement of being is liberated from the alien element of non-personal temporality. The spirit’s succession now becomes entirely interior, that is, determined solely by the succession inherent in its exercise of its own being. This occurs in a total awareness and presence of being, and not in mere flashes that reach us only fragmentarily. Thus the spirit is no longer swept along by an alien succession. It is able to realize fully the whole continuity of its being, all at once, in one and the same act.
We cannot give complete expression to this spiritual process in our own concepts because these are formed on the second timelevel. We speak of “partial realizations”,
